5Q4 > An Award-winning Young Writer

On September 13 this year, Esther Hebbard won the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) Award for Young Christian Author of the Year for her short story “Where the Piece Fits.”

1 What fuels your passion for writing? > I’ve been writing seriously since I was 14. I can’t explain it, I just knew that’s something I had to do. I’ve kept a journal since then too. My passion for writing is fuelled by a lot of things. First, my writing is fuelled by God. I still remember feeling some sort of conviction back when I was 14 that God wanted me to write. My writing can be very personal to me so I use it as some sort of healing process or a way to understand something better so a lot of my writing is a passion in itself. I am also a passionate musician, so music definitely fuels my writing. I love images too. Sometimes I get this image in my head and I write about it using imagery, like body language of the characters, certain motifs or thematic images. And last, but certainly not the least, people fuel my writing. I have some really crazy friends and family in my life and a lot of the credit goes to them. I love people, they’re so funny!

2 What was involved in creating an entry for the SPCK competition? > I found out about the competition through various emails people sent on to me. Then I checked out the website. I got the story idea from a question and wrote about it. But the same thing went into it as I would any other thing I write. I get the idea, I scuplt it a little and plot it. Then I begin to write and I allow room for my characters to shape the story. It’s a strange process, actually. The intial writing doesn’t take that long—it’s the planning and re-editing that takes all the time.

3 What have you used writing for in church? > I became involved in 2005 writing the script for the Road to Bethlehem (RTB) for my church (LIvingston Adventist church in Perth), plus helping on the planning committee and co-directing with Amanda Harders. I had a lot of fun last year, so this year I wrote the script again with a team of two others. There have been many passionate people behind RTB and I’m only one of them. Livingston and churches from around Western Australia have a lot of dedicated people that make RTB work for our community every year. I’ve enjoyed being involved and it’s been a priviledge and fantastic experience.

4 What are your perspectives on Christian writing in the 21st century? > This one is actually quite hard to answer. My writing education has come from a mainstream, secular university so my approach to writing is similar—and my preference is to the literary fiction genre. But I also grew up reading a lot of Christian authors like Janette Oke and Kay D Rizzo so I loved their novels (I also grew up to Asterix comics—what does that say?). I suppose Christian writing should have a balance between a focus on God and a good literary style. I’m very biased because of my love for literary fiction.

5 Any advice/hints/tips for young Christian writers? > I’m still learning and I will always be learning, so I’m not really an authority. All I have to offer is my personal experiences and advice I recieved from even better writers. My lecturers at uni have a few personal favourites (never stop editing, beware of clichés, use fresh language, get outsider opinions etc). What I would add to that is, God is always there to talk things out with you and guide you. If God has given you the voice to write, then write. As you write, you need to discover your own personal “voice” and understand that what you have to say is valid. (I like Bible verses 1 Timothy 4:12 and Romans 12 when I think about this.)